McDyess sees himself in athletic Clippers rookie

Spurs forward Antonio McDyess came into the NBA 15 years ago hailed as one of the most athletic big men to enter the league in many years.

On Wednesday night at the AT&T Center, he faced a player some liken to the young McDyess: rookie Blake Griffin.

“A lot of people say that,” McDyess said before helping the Spurs dispatch the Clippers with a key block on Griffin with 2:05 remaining and the Spurs leading by seven. “He’s very explosive off of one leg.

“He’s definitely an explosive player. He might jump higher than me, when I was in my younger days. I’m looking at him like, ‘Wow.’?”

Gary Who? Count Gregg Popovich among those who hadn’t heard of rookie forward Gary Neal before he showed up at the Spurs’ practice facility this summer hoping for a chance to be on the team’s summer league roster.

“I never heard of him until he came in the gym,” Popovich said. “We had a free agent camp, and I liked him. Some other coaches liked him, and we talked and decided we wanted to keep him in the program and invited him to summer league, which he did.

“We were impressed with him there and decided to take a chance and go ahead and guarantee him.”

Neal entered Wednesday’s game against the Clippers averaging 7.7 points, on 47.2 percent shooting, but played only the final 1:11.

A purposeful miss: After watching former Spurs center Francisco Elson, now with the Jazz, make an overtime free throw against the Heat that he was told to miss, Spurs guard Manu Ginobili weighed in on how difficult an intentional miss can be.

“I think it’s kind of hard,” he said. “It seems that players don’t really want to miss. They shoot it awkwardly to make it look like they’re trying to miss, or they are just pretty bad shooters.”

Elson went to the line with four-tenths of a second left in overtime in Miami, a game the Jazz would end up winning. Told to miss the second free throw intentionally, so the clock would likely run out, Elson fired the ball hard off the backboard and into the basket.

“Well, Francisco is a bad free-throw shooter, so it can happen,” Ginobili joked. “But it shouldn’t happen that often.”